Preliminary setup questions/Introductions

First of all, you guys have an awesome site with a wealth of information and some really helpful and interested members. So, kudos.

My name is Tyler. I'm living in Chicago and have been brainstorming my first attempt at programming and development of a game. From what I have seen so far it seems kike a majority of you guys favor C.

I want to design a text based rpg with contrxrual visuals. No 'live' graphics, slides essentially. I'd like to make it a standard fight a mob get xp/loot style game.

Anywho, I guess I wanted to say hi first of all and then kind of confirm which language I should start looking into. I have some intro to c++ under my belt but that's about it.

Also, just some newb questions on apps/tools. What programs should I be writing and compiling in? I'm still relatively new to OSX and my programming experience hasn't been used for many a year.

Sorry for rambling, I'm actually a couple hours into a 10 hour road trip so I'm startin to get loopy. =D

In many cases, language choice is mostly about what suits your way of thinking best, not what's technologically possible in the language. What you're describing is relatively low-tech, and could be accomplished with just about any modern programming or scripting language. So, the question to ask is, which language makes the most sense to you or seems most comfortable?

If you like to get into all the nitty-gritty details, cozy right up to the operating system and hardware, have the full power of your computer at your fingertips, and don't mind doing a lot of stuff yourself as opposed to letting the system take care of it, then something in the C family is likely to suit you.

If you'd like to focus on more abstract design, without having to manage every minute technical detail, then something higher-level may suit your needs better. I don't have much recent experience with high-level programming environments, but other forum members do and can probably give you some recommendations.

Whatever language you choose, the game design and implementation process is likely to be very similar - you'll just be typing out slightly different text to express it to the computer.

I'd recommend learning a bit of Objective-C and Cocoa, just to get used to developing applications on Mac OS X. No matter what language you use though, the process for developing the game isn't going to vary too much.